KUALA LUMPUR: Malayan Banking Bhd is optimistic about its outlook in the current second half of 2023, after seeing its net profit growing 26 per cent in the January-June period.
Maybank yesterday said its net profit rose to RM4.60 billion year-on-year in the first six months ended June 30 2023.
For the second quarter alone, the bank's net profit surged almost two-fold to RM2.34 billion from RM1.61 billion a year ago.
Group revenue for the quarter grew 58.09 per cent to RM16.13 billion from RM10.21 billion.
Maybank posted earnings per share of RM19.40 against RM13.44 from the previous year.
Its revenue for the first six months grew 46.62 per cent to RM31.32 billion from RM21.36 billion a year ago.
Group president and chief executive officer Datuk Khairussaleh Ramli said the outlook for the second half of the year is much more stable than the first half as interest rate is expected to maintain at 3.0 per cent for the rest of the year.
He added that the stability and certainty of the overnight policy rate for the second half ensured that borrowers will not be impacted by any possibility of interest rate for the rest of the year.
In terms of loan growth, Khairussaleh said the bank had been hopeful that the reopening of China's economy would help. However, the whole situation did not pan out as expected.
"But we are quite happy to see that the services continue to grow and tourism continues to open up," he told the media at a briefing on Maybank's the first half results here.
He expects loans to pick up in the 2H23 in its Malaysia and Singapore operations.
"At the moment our (loan) growth is at 5.3 per cent year-on-year (YoY). We have had some experience of large repayment and others. We have a target of 5.0 to 6.0 per cent for the full year when it comes to loans growth," he said.
On earnings, with four months left in the year, Khairussaleh said Maybank expects to see more growth in 2H23.
Maybank also expects the OPR to remain at 3.0 per cent for the rest of the year, underpinned by the signs displayed by central banks globally which indicated no further increase.
"We have seen quite a steep compression in the first half primarily rising from competition,funding and deposits but we think that has stabilised. For the 2H23, and in fact we think that net interest margin (NIM) will continue to stabilise until the end of the year.
"From the full-year view, we see a compression from the perspective of YoY. We have a NIM guidance for the full year of compression of up to 25 basis points" he said.
In terms of strategy to attract more deposits, Khairussaleh said Maybank will focus more on the non-rates proposition.
"For example on the retail side, we are looking at payroll based on SMEs and corporates. We believe that this presents the opportunity to offer payroll to these companies who have not yet done so," he said.
He added that in the SMEs space, Maybank is looking beyond the cash management capabilities such as cash management solutions, QRpay, sales and merchandising.